The Listings

Published: October 22, 2004

Movies

A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy movies playing this weekend in New York City. * denotes a highly recommended film. Ratings and running times are in parentheses. Full reviews of all current releases, movie trailers, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/movies.

Now Playing

'BEING JULIA' Starring Annette Bening. Directed by Istvan Szabo (R, 103 minutes). A flimsy frame surrounding a marvelous performance. As Julia Lambert, an aging star of the prewar London stage, Ms. Bening swoops from melodrama to farce with splendid hauteur and touching fragility. Julia, whose marriage to her long-time director (Jeremy Irons) has long been a primarily professional attachment, falls into an affair with Tom Fennel (Shaun Evans), a sweet-faced, penniless American who turns out to be a callow adventurer. In tracing the phases of her affair -- from rapture to heartbreak to revenge -- the film is too busy and plodding to develop an emotional core, and Mr. Evans has all the sexual magnetism of a boiled potato. The rest of the cast supports Ms. Bening gallantly, and she lifts the movie from the costume-drama doldrums by sheer dazzling force of will. A. O. SCOTT

'A DIRTY SHAME' Starring Tracey Ullman and Johnny Knoxville. Written and directed by John Waters (NC-17, 89 minutes). A crashing bore is more like it. Mr. Waters's latest movie once again pits unruly, life-affirming sex maniacs against uptight prudes. The line between them is blurry: the heroine, Sylvia Stickles (Ms. Ullman), starts out as a repressed suburban mother and, after suffering a concussion, goes on a libidinous rampage. She joins a sex-addict cult (led by Mr. Knoxville), which is devoted to discovering a hitherto undreamed-of kink that will unlock the erotic secrets of the universe. The movie sounds like more fun than it is, but Mr. Waters, after more than 35 years of moviemaking, remains a determined amateur. If his jokes were still funny, or his attitudes still provocative, the crudeness of the picture would be less bothersome, but the net effect of all the energetic naughtiness is like that of being in a room full of 8-year-old boys who have just learned some new swear words. SCOTT

'THE FORGOTTEN' Starring Julianne Moore, Dominic West and Gary Sinise. Directed by Joseph Ruben (PG-13, 100 minutes). In this preposterous thriller, a pseudo-spiritual, mumbo-jumbo, sciencefiction-inflected mess, Mr. Ruben does not just fail to tap into the talent of his luminous star, Ms. Moore; he barely gets her attention. As Telly, a Brooklyn mother in mourning, Ms. Moore delivers a performance that has all the emotional commitment of a bored kid playing with a light switch. Even after Telly discovers that all the images of her dead son have been erased from the photographs scattered around her home, Ms. Moore keeps flipping the switch: sad, not sad; sad, not sad. Initially, the disappearing images are explained away by Telly's creepy psychiatrist, Dr. Munce (Mr. Sinise), who insists that the boy never existed and that after suffering a miscarriage, she invented him out of thin air. Telly finds this hard to believe (she isn't the only one) and embarks on a Search for the Truth involving cheap thrills, emotional uplift and some nonsense about the eternal mother. MANOHLA DARGIS

'FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS' Starring Billy Bob Thornton. Directed by Peter Berg (PG-13, 105 minutes). Mr. Berg directs this Texas high school football extravaganze in a tough, gritty style that gives it an unusually fine and vivid sense of place. The place in question is Odessa, a West Texas town where football is more than just an obsession; it's the foundation of the social order and the source of life's meaning. The film, based on H. G. Bissinger's 1990 book of reportage, follows a handful of senior athletes and their put-upon coach (Mr. Thornton) through an anxious season. The town wants a state championship, and in trying to satisfy this expectation the young men face extraordinary risks and sacrifices. Conventional as it is, ''Friday Night Lights'' is both rousing and honest, and it features good performances from Derek Luke, as the team's star runner, and Lucas Black as its anxious quarterback. SCOTT

* 'I (heart) HUCKABEES' Starring Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert, Jude Law, Jason Schwartzman and Lily Tomlin. Directed by David O. Russell (R, 105 minutes). This high-wire comedy captures liberal-left despair with astonishingly good humor: it's ''Fahrenheit 9/11'' for the screwball set. Choc-a-block with strange bedfellows -- Mr. Hoffman and Ms. Tomlin play a hot-and-heavy married couple, Mr. Schwartzman gets his groove on with Ms. Huppert -- the film is a snort-out-loud-funny master class of controlled chaos. In this topsy-turvy world, where yes is the new corporate no and businesses sponsor environmental causes while bulldozing over Ranger Rick, a pair of existential detectives sift through a client's trash to solve the riddle of his malaise. Like Mr. Russell, they gladly risk foolishness to plunge into the muck of human existence. The film is loud, messy, aggressively in your face and generally played for the back row in the theater, and it doesn't offer up solutions, tender any comfort or rejoice in the triumph of the human spirit. All we can do, says Mr. Russell, is keep pushing the rock back uphill. That's kind of a bummer, but in its passion, energy and go-for-broke daring, in its faith in the possibility of human connection (if not its probability), ''I Huckabees'' provides its own reason for hope. DARGIS

'LADDER 49' Starring Joaquin Phoenix and John Travolta. Directed by Jay Russell (PG-13, 115 minutes). In ''Ladder 49'' fires smolder and rage and generally act in a far more lively and persuasive fashion than any of the men struggling to put them out. A sob story, the film stars Mr. Phoenix as Jack Morrison, a once and future hero who battles untold infernos, saves untold lives and quaffs untold draft beers to become a fireman's fireman, the kind who fearlessly enters burning buildings and puts everything at risk, including a picture-perfect family and a self so radically unexamined, so thin and vaporous, it's a wonder it doesn't drift off the screen along with all the billows of enveloping smoke. Pegged as a true-to-life story, one meant to put a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye, this is essentially a male weepy about strong, simple men and the strong, simple women behind them, and as such it's platitudinous rubbish. What makes this nonsense more galling than usual is that while ''Ladder 49'' might have started out as a heartfelt attempt to honor those in the line of literal fire, it weighs in as an attempt to exploit their post-Sept. 11 symbolism. DARGIS

* 'THE MOTORCYCLE DIARIES' Starring Gael Garc?Bernal and Rodrigo de la Serna. Directed by Walter Salles (R, 126 minutes; in Spanish, with English subtitles). In 1952 Alberto Granado, a 29-year-old chemist, and his pal Ernesto Guevara, a 23-year-old medical student, set out from Buenos Aires to explore South America. Their journey might have vanished into private recollection were it not for the fact that Ernesto went on to become Che, political idol, revolutionary martyr and pillar of the T-shirt industry. Mr. Salles's film, based on Granado and Guevara's notebooks, is partly a political coming-of-age story in which Ernesto (Mr. Bernal) awakens to the injustice that plagues the continent. But the movie is also a rambunctious buddy picture (thanks in part to Mr. de la Serna's high-spirited portrayal of the Falstaffian Granado), a breathtaking travelogue and an unusual love story. The love in question is Ernesto's sensual and spiritual connection to the continent itself, beautifully communicated through Eric Gautier's sublime cinematography. Mr. Bernal's soulful performance is sure to enhance his reputation as one of the most magnetic young actors around, but the real stars of the movie are the rugged Chilean highlands, the peaks of the Andes and the misty banks of the Peruvian Amazon. SCOTT

'RAISE YOUR VOICE' Starring Hilary Duff. Directed by Sean McNamara (PG, 97 minutes). Ms. Duff, as Terri Fletcher, redefines the word ''pep.'' But when tragedy strikes her family, Terri loses her voice (her great joy is singing) and her love of life. The only thing that might snap her out of it would be attending a very hard to get into summer-music program in Los Angeles, but her hardheaded father (David Keith) objects. It takes deception and the help of a free-spirited aunt (Rebecca De Mornay) to get her there. Predictably, the big city lives up to its bad reputation at first, but chances are good that Terri will find her voice again, teach her parents a lesson and get the guy (Oliver James). Thinking adults won't find much of ''Raise Your Voice'' worth their time, but this piece of fluff's infectious high spirits will appeal to young moviegoers without conveying any sinister messages, beyond the suggestion that soul-crushing grief can be ''cured'' in the short space of a summer.
ANITA GATES

'SHALL WE DANCE?' Starring Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez and Susan Sarandon. Directed by Peter Chelsom (PG-13, 106 minutes). This Americanization of a popular 1996 Japanese film is an old-fashioned feel-good fantasy that piles on the euphoria. The movie returns Mr. Gere to the site of his hoofing triumph in ''Chicago.'' His character is a mild-mannered estate lawyer, happily married with two teenage children, who on an impulse starts taking evening ballroom dancing classes. As he evolves from bland suburban frog into suave dance-floor prince, he regains his faltering zest for life and refreshes his marriage (to Ms. Sarandon). Ms. Lopez, in full sizzle, is the dedicated instructor who teaches him that ballroom dancing, as she puts it, is ''a vertical expression of a horizontal wish.'' STEPHEN HOLDEN

'SHARK TALE' With the voices of Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Ren?Zellweger, Jack Black and Angelina Jolie. Directed by Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron and Rob Letterman (PG, 92 minutes). Swimming in the lucrative wake of ''Finding Nemo,'' DreamWorks's foray into computer-generated underwater animation is a rambunctious, reasonably amusing pop confection. Where Pixar goes for sublimity and sincerity, DreamWorks continues to prefer a jokey, referential style, full of bright colors, almost-offensive ethnic stereotypes, big-name movie stars and easy cultural references that sail over the heads of the children in the audience and splatter in their parents' faces. Mr. Smith, as charming in fins and scales as in the flesh, is Oscar, a fish who becomes a celebrity after falsely taking credit for killing a mobbed-up shark. Mr. Black is the dead shark's vegetarian brother, Mr. De Niro is the shark capo, and Ms. Zellweger and Ms. Jolie are competing romantic interests, the latter a slinky, pouty fish fatale. SCOTT

'SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW' Starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie and Giovanni Ribisi. Written and directed by Kerry Conran (PG, 107 minutes). In this movie's elegant murk, Mr. Law and Ms. Paltrow slip into comic-book archetypes of the dashing aviator and the intrepid girl reporter with supreme confidence. When Mr. Conran's remarkable filmmaking debut remembers that storytelling and characters matter more than design and special effects, the movie charms as well as impresses. If nothing else, it is a landmark of computer-generated images, with actors cavorting through an entirely synthetic, retro-styled future world that fuses Art Deco, Futurism, Fritz Lang's ''Metropolis'' and the spirit of the 1939 World's Fair into an all-purpose eve-of-World War II environment extrapolated into a science-fiction limbo. But its visual elegance comes at a price. Its ethereal evocation of a pulp-fiction future-past eclipses almost any other sci-fi franchise in subtlety and imagination, but shadowy washed-out color is a far cry from the robust hues of a movie like ''Raiders of the Lost Ark.'' HOLDEN

'STAGE BEAUTY' Starring Billy Crudup and Claire Danes. Directed by Richard Eyre (R, 105 minutes). A 17th-century ''Star Is Born,'' though with interestingly convoluted sexual politics and a provocative historical thesis. Mr. Crudup is Ned Kynaston, one of the biggest stars of the London stage, who specializes in playing Shakespearean heroines. Ms. Danes is Maria, his loyal, ambitious dresser, who, with the help of the king's mistress, ends the long ban on female performers, thus destroying Ned's career. In spite of a sludgy Sunday-brunch score and a weak performance from Ms. Danes, the film explores its period with rare precision and with a lively sense of intellectual curiosity. Much of this is squandered, though, in a flat and conventional final act that turns Ned and Maria into the inventors of Method acting and, recoiling from its earlier subtlety, celebrates a world where men are men and women are women. SCOTT

* 'TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE' With the voices of Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Directed by Mr. Parker (R, 98 minutes). Without question the finest R-rated puppet action-musical of the past decade. Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone, the creators of ''South Park,'' apply their foulmouthed ingenuity to blow-'em-up cinema and current geopolitics. Saddam Hussein, a key character in the ''South Park'' movie, has been replaced by Kim Jong Il, a bespectacled blend of Eric Cartman and Professor Chaos, who plots to arm terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. If that doesn't sound like a laughing matter, fear not: there are plenty of profane, catchy songs and giddily offensive jokes to keep you amused. But like any good satire, this film has a distinct moral point of view. The members of Team America, the square-jawed action heroes who take on Kim and his supporting cast of left-wing Hollywood stooges, may blow up a lot of stuff, but they do it by accident, not by design. And while the movie is happy to mock American bluster, it also expresses a blunt, uncynical patriotism. SCOTT

* 'VERA DRAKE' Starring Imelda Staunton and Phil Davis. Written and directed by Mike Leigh (R, 125 minutes). In this new film about a back-street abortionist, the moment invariably comes when the title character asks her client to bring her some boiling water. Vera's affect is so cozy, as nurturing as a maternal bosom, that it's always somewhat of a surprise when you remember that the water isn't for a warming cup of tea, but for the solution she dispenses. That's very much to Mr. Leigh's point since Vera wants nothing so much as to support the frightened, the dismayed and the impoverished who seek her help, who come to this tender dumpling of a woman because they believe they have no other choice. Here, the politics of abortion isn't a position that individuals can take and leave at will; it's what drives women underground to someone like Vera, with her clucks and smiles, her bar of lye soap and all that hot water. Set in London in 1950, and suffused with humanity rather than dogma, the film is easily Mr. Leigh's best work in a decade. DARGIS

Rock/Pop

A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy rock and popconcerts in the New York metropolitan region this weekend. * denotes a highly recommended concert. Full reviews of recent rock and pop performances: nytimes.com/music.

* AGAINST ME!/BLOOD BROTHERS, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111. An appealing double-bill starring two different bands of punk-rock eccentrics. Against Me!, from Gainesville, Fla., specializes in roaring, galloping folk songs. And the Blood Brothers, from Seattle, compose screaming (but sly) tantrums; their new album is ''Crimes'' (V2), which includes a jagged, wriggly ballad called, ''Peacock's Skeleton With Crooked Feathers''; for maximum enjoyment, bring a lyric sheet to the show and follow along. Tonight at 8, with True North; tickets are $12. KELEFA SANNEH

* DANU, Satalla, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-1155. Danu is an Irish traditional band that plays old-fashioned acoustic instruments, with a repertory that reaches from fierce fiddle reels to pensive ballads. Its arrangements show an ear for texture that allows for both drive and delicacy. Tonight at 7:30; admission is $18. PARELES

* DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE, Roseland Ballroom, 239 West 52nd Street, Manhattan, (212) 777-6800. This indie-rock band was responsible for one of 2003's best albums, ''Translatanticism'' (Barsuk), which contained 11 impeccable songs about lovers just out of reach. The guitarist and producer Chris Walla stripped the music down so you could hear every hum and sigh, and Ben Gibbard peeled back layers as he sang, often starting with a vivid metaphor and ending with a memorable plea. The live show is a bit louder and messier than the pristine album -- Mr. Gibbard doesn't miss a beat, but he does sometimes miss the microphone. Expect him to sound lovely, regardless. Tonight at 6:45, with Pretty Girls Make Graves; tickets are $21 in advance, $24 tonight.
SANNEH

VICENTE FERNANDEZ, Theater at Madison Square Garden, 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue, Manhattan, (212) 465-6741. In Mexico, Vicente Fernandez is a household name, a television star who owes his fame to songs about loving, crying and suffering. With his dramatic tenor voice and his wall-shaking vibrato, Mr. Fernandez brings out all the melodrama of Mexican ranchera songs, which bounce and laugh as they detail vast heartaches. Tomorrow night at 8; tickets are $54.50 to $139.50. PARELES

GALACTIC, Stone Pony, 913 Ocean Avenue, Asbury Park, N.J., (732) 502-0600 and Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, at 15th Street, Union Square, (212) 777-6800. Galactic carries on the second-line groove tradition of its hometown, New Orleans, with easy-rolling funk tunes that add a horn section to the syncopated subtleties of the Meters. At the Stone Pony tonight at 8; tickets are $18 in advance, $20 at the door. At Irving Plaza tomorrow night at 8, with Scratch (formerly of the Roots) opening, and Sunday night at 8 with Mike Doughty and JJ Grey opening; tickets are $25. PARELES

* AL GREEN,Westbury Music Fair, 960 Brush Hollow Road, Westbury, N.Y. (516) 334-0800, and Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway, at 74th Street, (212) 496-7070. Soul oldies meet gospel testifying in Al Green's highly unpredictable performances. He sings, he preaches, he dances, he tosses roses to the ladies. He jumps in and out of songs and teases the crowd with his timing and his whims. Sometimes he makes songs like ''Let's Stay Together' sound like aching, immediate pleas, and sometimes the audience ends up singing more than he does, but he's never less than charismatic. Stephanie Mills, who moved between Broadway (''The Wiz'') and pop-soul hits in the 1970's and 80's, opens at Westbury. But at the Beacon, Mr. Green is paired with another great gospel-steeped singer: Mavis Staples, whose husky voice holds both reverence and earthly sensuality. Her current album, ''Have a Little Faith'' (Alligator), is her first in a decade, and it shows she has held on to every bit of her sultry fervor. At Westbury tonight at 8; tickets are $56.50. At the Beacon tomorrow night at 8; tickets are $45 to $85.
PARELES

* JUNIOR BOYS, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street, near the Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 533-2111; Other Music, 15 East 4th Street, East Village, (212) 477-8150. Domino Records just reissued this Canadian group's suave debut album, ''Last Exit,'' which synthesizes different iterations of electonica: dubby microhouse, old-fashioned new wave, futuristic R & B. On the title track, Jeremy Greenspan sighs woe-is-us lyrics over rippling, hiccupping rhythms. And during the last song, ''When I'm Not Around,'' as a saxophone materializes, unexpectedly but gently, to nudge the CD toward its conclusion. Tomorrow night at the Bowery Ballroom at 10, opening for the appealing local guitar-tronica duo Ratatat and the fiddly German electro-pop act Mouse on Mars; tickets are $14. Sunday evening at Other Music at 7; admission is free. SANNEH

* KANDA BONGO MAN, Satalla, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-1155. Kanda Bongo Man is one of the suavest singers in Congolese pop, where suavity is king. He helped turn the lilting guitar rumbas of soukous into the even more upbeat style called kwassa kwassa, crooning over a skein of luminous guitars. Tomorrow night at midnight; admission is $25. PARELES

THE LAST OF THE INTERNATIONAL PLAYBOYS/MAIN SQUEEZE ORCHESTRA, Fez (downstairs at the Time Cafe), 380 Lafayette Street, at Great Jones Street, East Village, (212) 533-2680. Accordions and more accordions are on the bill as the Last of the International Playboys, a loungey, eclectic nine-piece band led by Walter Kuehr on accordion and bassoon, is reinforced by his other project: the 18-woman, 18-accordion Main Squeeze Orchestra, which he conducts. It's Mr. Kuehr's birthday. Tomorrow night at 7; tickets are $12 in advance, $15 tomorrow.
PARELES

* LITTLE BRAZIL, Pianos, 158 Ludlow Street, near Rivington Street, Lower East Side, (212) 505-3733. A band led by Landon Hedges, an Omaha singer-songwriter who has spent time with both Desaparecidos and the Good Life. Mr. Hedges has a skewed, boyish warble, which pulls his sweet and tuneful indie-rock songs slightly askew; ''Now,'' from the group's forthcoming debut album (on the Seattle-based Mt. Fuji Records), has a simple chord progression, a swaying 6/8 beat and lots of sighing-then-screaming mood changes; by the time you're finished figuring out whether you like it, the song's already over -- and, more likely than not, already stuck in your head. Tonight at 8:30; tickets are $8.
SANNEH

* LYLE LOVETT/JOHN HIATT/JOE ELY/GUY CLARK, Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway at 74th Street, (212) 496-7070. Three Texans and a ringer from Indiana share this bill of smart, down-home songwriters. Lyle Lovett uses the ache in his voice to sound utterly heartfelt even when his songs grow wry and absurd, while his limber band covers the Texas spectrum from swing to honky-tonk to gospel. John Hiatt, who was born in Indianapolis, sings about loyalty, love and the full range of human eccentricity with his deep-diving baritone and unlikely rhymes. Joe Ely's songs encompass a West Texas of cowboys and cockfights, honky-tonks and wide-open spaces, country and rockabilly and rhythm-and-blues, and Guy Clark writes cozy, aphoristic songs about the pleasures of friendship, romance and home-grown tomatoes. Tonight at 8; tickets are $38.50 to $78.50. PARELES

* PHIL ROY, Satalla, 37 West 26th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-1155. The first words on Phil Roy's most recent album, ''Issues + Options'' (Or Music) are, ''I've got a feeling something's wrong.'' An undercurrent of raw melancholy runs through his songs, making him a kindred spirit to brooding types like Leonard Cohen, John Martyn and Peter Gabriel. He often sings in a thoughtful tenor with a backup of folky guitars, and occasionally he rasps like a haggard rocker, but he's always full of clear-eyed compassion. Tomorrow night at 7:30; admission is $15. PARELES

ROGER SANCHEZ, Crobar, 530 West 28th Street, Chelsea, (212) 629-9000. Mr. Sanchez, a local D.J. and producer, helped invent contemporary New York dance music, occasionally adding Latin rhythms to his clattering house-inspired beats. Ever since his 2002 award for a No Doubt remix, he's invariably called a ''Grammy-winning D.J.,'' although that title seems like faint praise. This past August he issued ''Release Yourself Vol. 3'' (Stealth), an appealing double-disc mix that starts with gauzy, disco-influenced mood music and ends with Carl Kennedy's buoyant and precise house track, ''The Love You Bring Me.'' Tomorrow night after 10; tickets are $20 in advance, more at the door. SANNEH

THE SECTION QUARTET, Mercury Lounge, 217 East Houston Street, at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side, (212) 260-4700. The Section Quartet is a string quartet that plays rock events like the Coachella Festival; for this show, it's performing its transcriptions of Radiohead's album 'OK Computer.' Tonight at 11; admission is $10. PARELES

GENO SITSON, Aaron Davis Hall, City College, West 135th Street and Convent Avenue, Hamilton Heights, (212) 650-6900. Geno Sitson, a New Yorker from Cameroon, sings modal songs that repatriate African-influenced jazz. Also, using his body for percussion, he performs vocal solos that evoke all sorts of voices, instruments and natural sounds, as if Bobby McFerrin had a brother steeped in African polyphony. Tomorrow at 2; admission is free, but reservations are required. PARELES

TOWER OF POWER, B. B. King Blues Club and Grill, 243 West 42nd Street, Times Square, (212) 997-4144. A funk band from Oakland, Calif., that's renowned for the punch of its horn section, Tower of Power has persevered since the 1970's, concentrating less on songs (though it had moderate hits with ''So Very Hard to Go'' and ''Don't Change Horses'' in the early 1970's) than on a danceable groove. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8 and 10:30; tickets are $25.50 in advance, $30 the day of the show. PARELES

YOSHIDA BROTHERS/AKIRA SATAKE, Leonard Nimoy Thalia, 2537 Broadway, at 95th Street, (212) 864-5400 or (212) 545-7536. The shamisen is a Japanese stringed instrument with a bright, snapping attack that can sound a lot like a banjo to American ears, and music from Tsugaru, in northern Japan, bounces along like bluegrass. The Yoshida Brothers build modern tunes, with touches of rock and jazz, on a foundation of traditional shamisen music. To test the bluegrass connection, Akira Satake, a banjo player, opens the concert picking Appalachian tunes. Tomorrow at 3 and 8; tickets are $25, $21 for World Music Institute members. PARELES

Jazz

A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy jazz concerts in the New York metropolitan region this weekend. * denotes a highly recommended concert. Full reviews of recent jazz performances: nytimes.com/music.

ERIC ALEXANDER QUARTET, Smoke, 2751 Broadway, at 106th Street, (212) 864-6662. A young tenor saxophonist with a beautiful sound, centering in the Coltrane-ish lower-middle register; if he is a little unabashedly entranced by a particular area of jazz's past, around 1955 to 1965, he does well by it. Sets are tonight and tomorrow night at 9, 11 and 12:30; cover charge is $20. BEN RATLIFF

JOHN BENITEZ QUINTET, Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson Street, South Village, (212) 242-1063. This Puerto Rican bassist has become one of the most valuable parts of the new Latin-jazz scene in New York; he has recently been seen leading a number of different bands, and this is yet another. It includes Luis Bonilla on trombone, Ivan Renta on bass, and Patrick Forero on drums. Sets are tonight and tomorrow night at 9 and 10:30; admission is $15 per set. RATLIFF

* DIZZY ALUMNI ALLSTARS, Blue Note, 131 West Third Street, West Village, (212) 475-8592. This has become an annual homage to Dizzy Gillespie during his birthday week. It's usually led by Jon Faddis, but this weekend the star is Clark Terry, one of the great soloists in jazz; other musicians this week include Roy Hargrove, James Moody, Slide Hampton, Benny Green and the singer Roberta Gambarini. Sets through Sunday are at 8 and 10:30 p.m.; cover charge is $35 at the tables, $20 at the bar and there is a $5 minimum. RATLIFF

* DIZZY GILLESPIE FESTIVAL, Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street, Manhattan, (212) 258-9595. Jazz at Lincoln Center's new nightclub is opening with two weeks celebrating Dizzy Gillespie. The first week centers on Gillespie's small-band music, including his great bop landmarks of the 40's, and it features Bill Charlap's trio, with the alto saxophonist Charles McPherson and the trumpeter Nicholas Payton as guests. Sets through Sunday are at 7:30 and 9:30 p.m., with an 11 p.m. set tonight and tomorrow; cover charge is $35 with a $10 minimum at the tables and a $5 minimum at the bar. RATLIFF

* JIM HALL/GEOFF KEEZER, Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, West Village, (212) 255-4037. A weekend of duos by the guitarist Jim Hall -- a patient, honest musician and a fascinating improviser -- with the pianist Geoff Keezer. Sets through Sunday night are at 9 and 11; cover charge is $30. RATLIFF

* FRED HERSCH DUOS, Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, Manhattan, (212) 576-2232. If the jazz pianist Fred Hersch is a superb solo performer, that encomium can stretch to his duo performances, in which he both accompanies and makes a lot of his own rapturous, harmony-rich, dynamically calibrated sound-world as well. It's the end of a week at the Jazz Standard -- reprising a successful experiment at the club last year -- in which a different duo partner is featured each night. Tonight Mr. Hersch performs with the bassist John Patitucci, tomorrow with the singer Nancy King and Sunday night with the tenor saxophonist Joel Frahm. Sets through Sunday are at 7:30 and 9:30, with an 11:30 set tonight and tomorrow; cover charge is $25, and $20 on Sunday. RATLIFF

* DAVE HOLLAND QUINTET, Birdland, 315 West 44th Street, Clinton, (212) 581-3080. It's unmistakable when a band hits its stride, and the bassist Dave Holland's quintet arrived at that point in the late 90's. The music seems to play itself: dynamically controlled, light and built of sleek lines from the horns in front (Chris Potter on saxophones and Robin Eubanks on trombone), which come together and then fork off into elegant counterpoint. And it is settled by the leader's strong, thick bass lines, in vamps that repeat and repeat until it's time for solos that virtuosically make their case. Sets tonight and tomorrow are at 9 and 11; cover charge is $40 and there is a $10 minimum. RATLIFF

ARTURO O'FARRILL, BAM Cafe, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 636-4100. Mr. O'Farrill, son of the composer and arranger Chico O'Farrill, came into his father's band through the piano chair and now, since the father's death, has become its boss; more recently he became leader of Lincoln Center's impressive new Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra. He is as conceptually invested in Afro-Cuban jazz as his father was, but in his own band he gets the jolt of the new by collaborating with the great younger players of the music. Tonight at 9:30; minimum is $10. RATLIFF

* DIANNE REEVES AND FREDDY COLE, Rose Hall, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at 60th Street, (212) 721-6500. Jazz singers these days seem more likely to find their information more in the restraint and mystery of bossa nova than in the unapologetic splendor of, say, Sarah Vaughan. Maybe it's because they feel that reticent music implies modernity more quickly. If so, Dianne Reeves is their opposite: she's only lightly concerned with reticence. She has an enormous (and Vaughan-inspired) voice, and an enormous talent, and she offers it up to stun her audience. Freddy Cole is the brother of Nat (King) Cole, but they sound more like cousins: though the quick-reflex delivery is there in the voice, Freddy has a richer, wider tone. He is one of the better ballad singers in jazz. Tomorrow at 8 p.m.; tickets are $30 to $150. RATLIFF

* VISION CLUB: JOHN ZORN, ROB BROWN, ROY CAMPBELL, HENRY GRIMES, ET. AL., Brunstein Showroom, 13 Stanton Street between Chrystie and Bowery, Lower East Side, (212) 696-6681. It's the first night of what will become a weekly occurrence: a group of musicians in New York's free-jazz community gathered together at this new Lower East Side spot to improvise together in varying formations. Tonight at 8 and 10; admission is $15. RATLIFF

* STEVE WILSON QUARTET, Sweet Rhythm, 88 Seventh Avenue South, West Village, (212) 255-3626. Steve Wilson, the saxophonist, has been in demand all over the jazz world since the 90's; everybody wants his light sound and his total assimilation of postwar saxophone history, from Parker to Coleman. He brings a band this weekend that includes the pianists Helen Sung (tonight) and Bruce Barth (tomorrow) as well as the bassist Richie Goods and the drummer Adam Cruz. Sets are tonight and tomorrow at 8, 10 and midnight; cover charge is $20 and there is a $10 minimum. RATLIFF

Cabaret

A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy cabaret shows in Manhattan this weekend. * denotes a highly recommended show. Full reviews of recent cabaret shows: nytimes.com/music.

* KAREN AKERS, Le Jazz au Bar, 41 East 58th Street, (212) 308-9455. Ms. Akers brings back ''Time After Time,'' her acclaimed salute to the traditional love song. Demure and statuesque with an air of aristocratic reserve, she retains the formality of a concert performer while delivering beautifully intoned, deeply felt versions of standards that include ''I'm Old Fashioned,'' ''Falling in Love With Love.'' ''Time After Time,'' and ''Loving You.'' It is as romantically satisfying a cabaret show as you'll ever find. Don Rebic accompanies on piano. Tonight through Sunday night at 8, with a late show tomorrow night at 10:30. Cover $50 tonight and tomorrow night, $35 on Sunday; no minimum. STEPHEN HOLDEN

BARBARA CARROLL, Oak Room, Algonquin Hotel, 59 West 44th Street, (212) 419-9331. The Lady of a Thousand Songs is back in the Oak Room for Sunday brunch and evening performances. This elegant, red-headed pianist and singer is a poised entertainer whose impeccable pianism belongs to the school of jazz that maintains a sense of classical decorum at the keyboard. Even when swinging out, she remains an impressionist with special affinities for Thelonious Monk and bossa nova. Vocally, she belongs to the conversational tradition of Mabel Mercer with a style that's blas?ut never cold. Sunday at 2 and 8 p.m. Cover: $55 at 2, including brunch at noon; $80 at 8, with dinner served at 6:30. HOLDEN

CY COLEMAN, Feinstein's at the Regency, 540 Park Avenue, at 61st Street, (212) 339-4095. At 75, the Count Basie of cocktail jazz piano still commands the keyboard with the authority of a sharpshooter who never misses. He is served exceptionally well by the other members of his trio, the bassist Gary Haase and the drummer Buddy Williams. But his singing is shaky. The bulk of the show is an anecdote-laced retrospective of Mr. Coleman's show tunes sung by the composer in a gruff, frayed, occasionally tuneless voice. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8:30 and 11. Cover: $60; $40 minimum at the early shows and $30 at the late shows. HOLDEN

BOBBY SHORT, Cafe Carlyle, Carlyle Hotel, 35 East 76th Street, (212) 570-7189. After announcing his semi-retirement last year from performing at the Cafe Carlyle, this legendary singer and pianist changed his mind and is back in action for another season. Mr. Short never fails to conjure ebullient party spirits and has impeccable taste in songs. Expect to hear at one least one of his three signature songs, ''Guess Who's in Town?,'' ''Just One of Those Things'' and ''Romance in the Dark,'' along with something by one of the two Dukes (Ellington and Vernon). Tonight and tomorrow night 8:45 and 10:45. Cover: $90. HOLDEN

Classical

A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy opera and classical music events this weekend in the New York metropolitan region. * denotes a highly recommended event. Full reviews of recent classical music and opera performances: nytimes.com/music.

Opera

'AIDA' The Metropolitan Opera often succeeds in making a spectacle of itself; at least the spectacle is warranted in the case of Verdi's ''Aida,'' originally conceived as grand opera. Everyone involved in the current revival can at least succeed in making the thing fly, led by Dolora Zajick as Amneris, whose ringing mezzo sometimes threatens to blow everyone else offstage, and Marcello Viotti in the pit, trying to keep the other principals in line. Fiorenza Cedolins is not up to the title role, except when she can sing quietly, but at least looks pretty; Franco Farina as Radam?has a robust tenor but a hint of a buzz-saw quality in the upper register. Add a few armies of dancers and a couple of braces of horses and you could have a fine old time. Tomorrow night at 8, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000. Tickets: $40 to $215. ANNE MIDGETTE

'LA BOH?E' It has been some time since the Metropolitan Opera's crowd-pleasing production of Puccini's ''Boh?'' has held much interest for adventurous opera buffs. But this revival offers an impressive and intriguing cast. The golden-voiced coloratura soprano Ruth Anne Swenson continues her exploration of the rich lyric-soprano repertory as she sings the role of Mimi. The elegant soprano Ainhoa Arteta will be Musetta. The impassioned tenor Marcelo lvarez sings Rodolfo, and the young Swedish baritone Peter Mattei, who was such a charismatic Don Giovanni last season, appears as Marcello. Daniel Oren conducts. Tonight at 8, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000. Tickets: $35 to $200. ANTHONY TOMMASINI

'CARMEN' Over the years, Bizet's gritty op?-comique has succumbed to edema, and Franco Zeffirelli's Metropolitan Opera production suffers especially from bloat and stiffness, dealing in archetypes rather than living, breathing figures. Some new singers have stepped into the lead roles of this revival: Maria Domashenko takes on Carmen; Fabio Armiliato sings Don Jos?Maureen O'Flynn is Mica?; and the stentorian bass-baritone Louis Otey is Escamillo. An additional tenor will be present in the pit: Pl?do Domingo, tending his second (or is it third) career as a conductor. Tomorrow afternoon at 1:30, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, (212) 362-6000. Remaining tickets: $215. MIDGETTE

'LE NOZZE DI FIGARO' This great collaboration between Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte has everything: comic scenes that demand clockwork pacing, spectacularly beautiful vocal and orchestral writing, a durable political undercurrent, thanks to the Beaumarchais play on which it is based, and most crucially, some truly moving lessons about love, betrayal and forgiveness. John Copley's lovely production has been in the New York City Opera repertory since 1977, but it has worn well, partly because the soft-hued sets and costumes by Carl Toms never get in the way of the music, and Albert Sherman's stage direction strikes a fine balance between solo turns and ensemble acting. The cast this season includes David Pittsinger as Figaro; Sharon Rostorf-Zamir as Susanna (in her house debut); Jennifer Rivera as Cherubino; Paulo Szot as the Count, and Orla Boylan as the Countess. Steven Mosteller conducts. Tonight at 8, Sunday at 1:30 p.m., New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 870-5570. Tickets: $27 to $105 tonight; $32 to $115 on Sunday. ALLAN KOZINN

'LA TRAVIATA' Verdi's drama is so well written that a singer who can manage to get through the difficult title role is virtually guaranteed a success. At City Opera, Maria Kanyova attacks Violetta with a will and negotiates the role's hurdles with a kind of fierce vivacity, down to a brief but solid high E flat at the end of ''Sempre libera'' in Act I. Since the start of this revival in September, she has been joined by some new men in her life: Grant Youngblood, who should be a fine strong Germont, and Eric Fennell as Alfredo. Ari Pelto, a young conductor in his first appearances with the company, conducts. Tomorrow night at 8, New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 870-5570. Tickets: $32 to $115. MIDGETTE

Classical Music

BARGEMUSIC Moored in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, this intimate floating concert hall is a charming place to hear solo recitals and chamber music while rocking gently on the waves of the East River. Tonight, the German cellist Peter Bruns and the pianist Christoph Berner complete their two-part survey of Beethoven's music for cello and piano, including the seldom-performed variations on a theme from Mozart's ''Magic Flute.'' Tomorrow and Sunday, the violinist Mark Peskanov joins them for Beethoven's ''Ghost'' Trio and Schubert's magnificent B-flat major trio. Tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 and Sunday afternoon at 4, Fulton Ferry Landing, under the Brooklyn Bridge, Brooklyn, (718) 624-2083. Tickets: $35; students, $20. JEREMY EICHLER

CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER In its further pursuit of the European tradition, the Chamber Music Society heads east this weekend. Dvorak, master of Czech nationalism and every music lover's friend, takes up two-thirds of the program. The beloved Opus 81 Piano Quintet is one item, the lesser-known Opus 77 String Quintet, the other. Alexander Tcherepnin, a Russian cosmopolitan and busy composer, led a musical life on the fringes of a 20th-century music establishment dominated by Stravinsky and others, but his Cello Sonata in D will get a rare chance at the beginning of this program. Edgar Meyer is the bassist and Anne-Marie McDermott the pianist in an ensemble of players all of whom will be familiar to Chamber Music Society fans. Tonight at 8 and Sunday at 5 p.m., Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 875-5788. Tickets: $27.50 to $48. BERNARD HOLLAND

GEWANDHAUS ORCHESTRA OF LEIPZIG This orchestra, which traces its history to 1743, gave the world's first complete traversals of the Beethoven, Brahms and Bruckner symphonies and lists Felix Mendelssohn, Arthur Nikisch, Wilhelm Furtw?ler and Kurt Masur among its past music directors. Herbert Blomstedt, who became the orchestra's 18th director in 1998, is an insightful musician whose appproach should suit the all-Brahms programs he is leading on his current American tour with the orchestra. Yet concerts earlier this week at Avery Fisher Hall were puzzlingly inconsistent. Maybe it was an off night, or two. Now he heads across the Hudson to lead the Second Symphony and, with Garrick Ohlsson as his soloist, the First Piano Concerto. Tonight at 8, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center Street, Newark, (888) 466-5722. Tickets: $15 to $69. KOZINN

GUARNERI STRING QUARTET This recital of works by Beethoven, Dohnanyi and Dvorak opens the 105th season of the Peoples' Symphony Concerts, an important series that presents both young and established performers at remarkably affordable prices. As ensembles go, it doesn't get more established than the Guarneri Quartet, which was founded 40 years ago and still has three of its original members. The group also retains much of its trademark interpretative elegance in standard repertory, though when heard last weekend at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there were occasional lapses in tuning and ensemble control. One has to admire the group's storied past, but it also makes one wish for more joyfulness or passion in its music-making of the present. Tomorrow at 8 p.m., Washington Irving High School, 40 Irving Place, Manhattan, (212) 586-4680. Tickets: $9. EICHLER

CHRISTINA KISS The line between bravery and foolhardiness may be a thin one, and undertaking to perform the complete solo piano works of Liszt -- from memory -- in several dozen recitals might easily fall on either side. Christina Kiss, a pianist who was born in Budapest and has won prizes at several international competitions, undertook this project in 1990 and has so far made it through about 550 works, leaving enough to keep her busy, she estimates, through 2015 (a decade beyond her original projection). Ms. Kiss has not listed a program for her recital tomorrow but at this point, more than 30 installments into the series, it scarcely matters. More to the point, Ms. Kiss has the bravura technique and the imagination to make this mammoth project work, and if you're a Liszt fancier, this is clearly the place to be. Tomorrow afternoon at 2, Weill Recital Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800. Tickets: $35 to $45. KOZINN

LUXEMBOURG PHILHARMONIC Bramwell Tovey, this orchestra's British music director, has begun to make headway in America, notably in a series of summertime concerts with the New York Philharmonic a few months ago. The orchestra is making its New York debut, but you can sample its wares beforehand in a new recording of works by Albert Roussel on the Timpani label. And the great added attraction is the percussionist Evelyn Glennie, playing vibraphone in a transcription of a Vivaldi concerto and marimba in the New York premiere of Bright Sheng's ''Colors of Crimson.'' Mr. Bramwell also leads the orchestra in Berlioz's ''Roman Carnival'' and Elgar's ''Enigma Variations.'' Sunday at 3 p.m., Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 721-6500. Tickets: $30 to $65. JAMES R. OESTREICH

* 'MUSIC FOR NEW YORK NOW' Marathon performances take on their own momentum. At the 10-hour piano extravaganza inaugurating a new performance space at the Faust Harrison Pianos showroom on Sunday, that momentum may be the main connecting thread in a deliberately eclectic narrative. The music is by composers from Chopin to Cage, classical to jazz; the 20-odd performers include leading lights of the contemporary scene like Margaret Leng Tan and Kathleen Supov?even the instruments are varied, with pianos described as ranging from ''rare vintage'' to contemporary. Conceived and curated by Jed Distler and Michael Harrison, both composers and pianists whose own works will be performed, the marathon is offered free of charge to the public, so that one's own comings and goings form the parameters of an individual's experience of the event. Sunday from noon to 10 p.m., Faust Harrison Pianos, 205 West 58th Street, Manhattan, (212) 489-0666. MIDGETTE

NEW YORK VIRTUOSO SINGERS A chamber chorus with the word virtuoso in its name might seem over-confident, but the New York Virtuoso Singers can claim truth in advertising. Founded in 1988 by Harold Rosenbaum, the ensemble has won consistent praise for its technically accomplished and authoritative performances of a wide-range of challenging 20th-century and contemporary music. Mr. Rosenbaum is not just an expert music director but a bracing programmer. On Sunday his ensemble offers a typically adventurous program titled ''American Gems,'' with works by Crumb, Tsontakis, Zaimont, Mayer, Pellegrini and Chuaqui. At 4 p.m., Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, at 73rd Street, (212) 288-8920. Suggested donation: $10; $8 for students and 65+.
TOMMASINI

ORPHEUS On its good days, this famously conductorless ensemble can play with enough precision and character to make baton-wielding maestros seem superfluous. Naturally, it also helps when the group has a strong soloist to take the lead, as it will in this concert when the formidable pianist Garrick Ohlsson performs Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1. The ensemble is also expanding its repertory, performing two works this weekend for first time: Brahms's Haydn Variations and Sandor Veress's ''Transylvanian Dances.'' Tomorrow night at 8, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800. Tickets: $30 to $88. EICHLER

PANOCHA QUARTET Or you could argue that the headliner here is the Hungarian-born pianist Andras Schiff, in the second of a run of three appearances. (The last is a solo recital next Thursday in the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall.) Here Mr. Schiff joins the Prague-based Panocha Quartet in Dvorak's Opus 81 Quintet. But the more savory Czech spices, if not the meat of the program, comes in Janacek's two quartets, the ''Kreutzer Sonata'' and ''Intimate Letters,'' as performed by masters of the style. Tonight at 7:30, Zankel Hall, Carnegie Hall, (212) 247-7800. Tickets: $38 to $52. OESTREICH

CHARLES ROSEN One of the great thinkers of the keyboard world, Charles Rosen is renowned for his insightful books and essays. But his performances are by no means bookish: as concerned as he is with the details of form and style, he presents the great composers as creatures of flesh and blood, animated by passions, desires, victories and disappointments. In the second installment of his three-part series, ''The Romantic Generation'' -- the title comes from one of his books -- Mr. Rosen is exploring the peculiar world of Robert Schumann, one of Romanticism's defining spirits. Included in his program are the ''Arabeske,'' the Intermezzo from ''Faschingsschwank aus Wien,'' the Fantasy in C (Op. 17) and the richly characterized ''Davidsb?ert?e.'' Sunday at 3 p.m., with a preconcert lecture at 1:30. 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, (212) 415-5500. Tickets: $30. KOZINN

* TOKYO STRING QUARTET With Hitler's ascent, many composers and musicians were forced to flee Europe, and we are only now beginning to understand how the modernist project was transported and transformed in their flight. With this concert, the Tokyo String Quartet begins a promising series at the 92nd Street Y, exploring the music of three exiled composers: Zemlinksy, Schoenberg and Hanns Eisler. Works by the latter two make up the heart of this program, including Eisler's little-known but wonderful String Quartet, as well as ''Verkl?e Nacht,'' Schoenberg's feverishly beautiful paean to the Viennese fin-de-si?e. It's tempting to say the Tokyo players are watering down their conceit since the Schoenberg was not written in exile, and Haydn is also on the bill, but with music of this caliber performed by a top-tier ensemble, who would really complain? Tomorrow night at 8, 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, (212) 415-5500. Tickets: $35. EICHLER

Dance

A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy dance events this weekend in the New York metropolitan region. * denotes a highly recommended event. Full reviews of recent dance performances:
nytimes.com/dance.

AMERICAN BALLET THEATER The company's autumn season, which continues through Nov. 7, features a rich assortment of one-act works ideally suited for a space in which dramatic details come into vivid focus. Among this weekend's highlights are two new works to be shown tonight: Trey McIntyre's ''Pretty Good Year,'' a group piece (repeated tomorrow night and Sunday afternoon), and Christopher Wheeldon's ''VIII,'' a ballet about Henry VIII with Angel Corella as the amorous monarch (to be repeated later in the season). And there are amorous duelings in Jiri Kylian's ''Petite Mort.'' Tonight at 8, tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. City Center, West 55th Street, Manhattan, (212) 581-1212. Tickets: $35 to $80. (Related review, Page 3.) JACK ANDERSON

ARTUS/COMPANY GBOR GODA This leading Hungarian dance and theater company will perform ''Cain's Hat,'' which explores the biblical stories of Cain and Moses. Artus, founded and directed by G?r Goda, is known for its mix of concept, acrobatic movement and visual effects. Here, the performers perch on poles, collide in mid-air and pile stones. (For this they slaved at the ballet barre?) Today at noon and 8 p.m.; tomorrow at 8 p.m. The Kitchen, 512 West 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 255-5793, Ext. 11. Tickets: $20; $16 for students; $10 for noon performance. JENNIFER DUNNING

* MONICA BILL BARNES Ms. Barnes has the kind of humor -- not a snicker in sight -- that is in woefully short supply in dance these days. ''The Happy Dance (or what started out O.K.)'' sounds like a perfect example. In the tragicomic exploration of hopelessness, two twinlike characters become obsessed with a dreary, fast-paced jig that will not let go of them. Ms. Barnes describes it all as post-modern dance and musical theater with a Brechtian spin. Tonight through Sunday at 8:30 p.m. Danspace Project at St. Mark's Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, (212) 674-8194. Tickets: $15. DUNNING

IAN SPENCER BELL DANCE CIRCLE This weekend's wildcard program is the work of a man, Mr. Bell, who has defined his choreographic interest as being ''in the space above our heads and beyond our grasp.'' His new ''Looking at the Stars'' is set to the music of the Platters. ''Laundry'' will be danced to music by Arlo Guthrie. A reception follows each performance. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8. Williamsburg Arts neXus, 205 North Seventh Street, between Driggs and Roebling Streets, Brooklyn, (718) 599-7997. Tickets: $12. DUNNING

AKIM FUNK BUDDHA How to resist an artist who taught himself to stand still without blinking, tell stories, rap, tap and perform Mongolian throat singing? Mr. Buddha, who was born in Syracuse and raised in Zimbabwe, describes his ''Up in the Air'' as cosmic cabaret. It also features belly dancing by Pure and music by Mr. Kite. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8:30. BRIC Studio, 57 Rockwell Place, between Fulton Street and DeKalb Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn, (718) 855-7882, x53. Tickets: $10; $8 for students. DUNNING

* CHARLES DENNIS: 'HOMECOMING' This new documentary celebrates 20 years of dance and ultimate funk at P.S. 122, which Mr. Dennis co-founded. The film focuses on 10 choreographers who created seminal work there, with music by John Zorn, photography by Dona Ann McAdams and commentary by critics and presenters. Sunday (and Sundays through Nov. 14) at 2 p.m. P.S. 122, 150 First Avenue, at Ninth Street, East Village, (212) 477-5288. Tickets: $5. DUNNING

'FOREVER TANGO' Better than Viagra, and for all ages, too. Luis Bravo's ''Forever Tango'' features sultry and comical dancers and first-rate musicians in a show, extended through Nov. 28, that is both tacky and transcendent. Tonight (and Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays) at 8; tomorrow (and Wednesdays) at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Shubert Theater, 225 West 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 239-6200. Tickets: $45 to $85. DUNNING

FOURTHDIMENSIONDANCETHEATER Performers from De La Guarda, Momix and Stomp will join Karen Fuhrman and Dustin Stephens in their new ''Hymenoptera: The Social Order,'' danced to music by John Oyzon and Eric Lee of Groove Collective. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 7 and 9:30 p.m. John Ryan Theater at White Wave, 25 Jay Street, at John Street and the waterfront, Dumbo, Brooklyn, (917) 447-6285. Tickets: $16 to $25. DUNNING

KDNY Strictly speaking, this program combines the work of the New York-based KDNY company and of KDHDC of Austin, Tex. They will perform, respectively, modern-dance works dances by Kathleen Dyer and Kathy Dunn Hamrick. Now you know. Tonight at 9; tomorrow at 8 p.m. Cunningham Studio, 55 Bethune Street at Washington Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 924-0077. Tickets: $15; $10 for students, 65+ and dancers. DUNNING

ALI KENNER Ms. Kenner, whose mentor is Phyllis Lamhut, takes on the mathematical notion of absolute value in her new eveninglong dance of the same name. Set to music by Morgan Packard, the piece is a series of vignettes exploring the inevitabilities of attraction and habit. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8. Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer Street, between Houston and Prince Streets, (212) 334-7479. Tickets: $15. DUNNING

* KOOSIL-JA In her new mixed-media ''deadmandancing EXCESS,'' the choreographer formerly known as Kumiko Kimoto examines the fear and fantasy of dying. The set includes dozens of television monitors and the media includes film, specifically clips from movie death scenes. It all sounds pretty grim, but the Bessie Award-winning choreographer often offers new perspectives on the great themes. Tonight and tomorrow night (and Thursday through next Saturday) at 9. Performing Garage, 33 Wooster Street at Grand Street, SoHo, (212) 375-0186. Tickets: $15. DUNNING

MANDANCE PROJECT Eliot Feld's new choreographic endeavor brings together five men (Damian Woetzel, Wu-Kang Chen, Nickemil Concepcion, Jason Jordan and Sean Suozzi) and one woman (Patricia Tuthill) in solos, duets and group works by Mr. Feld to music ranging from Bach to jug band tunes. Tonight and tomorrow night at 8; Sunday at 3 p.m. Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, (212) 242-0800. Tickets: $42. ANDERSON

* MERIN SOTO DANCE & PERFORMANCE Ms. Soto's new ''M?ina del Tiempo'' (''Time Machine'') is a full-evening piece in three parts that explores popular dance and music forms as ''time machines,'' which reveal much about their eras. The multi-media piece draws on postmodern dance and improvisational salsa, hip-hop, swing and mambo. Tonight through Sunday (and Thursday through next Sunday) at 7:30 p.m. Dance Theater Workshop, 219 West 19th Street, Manhattan, (212) 924-0077. Tickets: $25. DUNNING

'MOUNTAIN VIEW ESTATES' Kourtney Rutherford of Big Dance Theater fame has set a murder in a house being built onstage. It all takes place in a residential tract in the shadow of a brooding volcanic Mount Rainier in Washington State in this eveninglong theater and dance piece, which examines the violence that lurks beneath everyday surfaces. Tonight and tomorrow night (and next Friday and Saturday) at 8 and 10. DUMBO Stable, 16 Main Street at Water Street, Brooklyn, (212) 420-7252. Tickets: $15. DUNNING

ANN ROBIDEAUX AND ALEXANDRA SHILLING Ms. Robideaux and Ms. Shilling choreograph offbeat dance as well as teaching at the American Dance Festival. Their new ''Sun Shines Over the Yardarm'' sounds like a similar mix of tradition and the new. The new site-specific dance piece will be performed aboard the historic lightship Frying Pan, as an interactive tour that combines dance, history and sound. Tomorrow at 1, 2 and 3 p.m. The Frying Pan, Pier 63, 23rd Street and West Side Highway, Chelsea, (646) 321-9383. Tickets: $15 (by reservation, which is recommended); $20 day of show. DUNNING

* STREB S.L.A.M. You could say Elizabeth Streb and her performers are sitting pretty, with their own 150-seat studio-theater in which to create new work and regularly present it. But no one sits for long at a Streb program. The dancers fly, dive and dangle in new and recent pieces. The audience can walk around, as at a fairground, with popcorn provided. Tonight and tomorrow night (and Fridays and Saturdays through Nov. 20) at 7.; Sunday (and Sundays through Nov. 21) at 3 p.m. S.L.A.M. (Streb Lab for Action Mechanics), 51 North First Street, Willliamsburg, Brooklyn, (718) 384-6481. Tickets: $15. DUNNING

* WORLD MUSIC INSTITUTE: MASKED RITUALS OF KERALA, INDIA In these ancient masked rituals (theyyams), men in sumptuous jeweled costumes and headdresses are transformed into gods and goddesses, shifting consciousness on stage from the mundane to the divine. Martial arts figure in dances (vellattam) for warrior gods. Sunday at 3 and 8 p.m. Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th Street, (212) 545-7536. Tickets: $30; $15, children. DUNNING

Theater

A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy Broadway and Off Broadway shows this weekend. Approximate running times are in parentheses. * denotes a highly recommended show.
+ means discounted tickets were available at the Theater Development Fund's TKTS booth for performances last Friday and Saturday nights.
++ means discounted tickets were available at the TKTS booth for last Saturday night only. Full reviews of current shows, additional listings, showtimes and tickets: nytimes.com/theater.

Broadway

+ 'DRACULA, THE MUSICAL' And here it is, looming like a giant stuffed bat on a stick, the easiest target on Broadway. This show, which sets the familiar tale of old snaggletooth to the familiar music of Frank Wildhorn, bristles with all the animation, suspense and sex appeal of a Victorian waxworks in a seaside amusement park. Take your shots. Say something, if you must, about toothlessness or bloodlessness or the kindness of hammering stakes into the hearts of undead shows. But you may concede that it isn't much fun to trash something so eminently trashable. ''Dracula, the Musical,'' which features a book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton and is directed by Des McAnuff (''The Who's Tommy''), isn't simply bad, which is an aesthetic state of being that is kind of fun if you're in the right mood. It is bad and boring. Among the talents wasted here are Melissa Errico, Kelli O'Hara, Stephen McKinley Henderson and, looking like a butler's butler in the title role, Tom Hewitt (2:10). Belasco Theater, 111 West 44th Street, (212) 239-6000. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $36.25 to $101.25. BEN BRANTLEY

*+ 'I AM MY OWN WIFE' (Tony winner for best play and best actor in a play). Doug Wright's one-actor play, with a thrillingly accomplished performance by Jefferson Mays and a diamond-sharp production directed by Mois?Kaufman, tells a terrific story based on a real person, Charlotte von Mahlsdorf (n?othar Berfelde), a soft-spoken but tenaciously gender-bending biological man who died in 2002 at 74. Her lifelong obsession -- Mahlsdorf preferred to be thought of as female -- was the preservation of furniture, especially from the 1890's, and other household relics like Victrolas and gramophones. Her devotion to her astonishing collection, with which she turned her home into a museum, gave focus and motivation to a life whose grandest achievement was that it proceeded to its natural end. The play is largely about Charlotte's enduring the cruel repressions of the Nazis and the Communists, and her harrowing tales of survival through the eras of the Gestapo and the Stasi are nothing short of breathtaking. Ah, but are they credible? That also becomes an issue in the play, which very subtly but, in the end, quite powerfully makes a case for the necessity of storytelling in our lives (2:15). Lyceum, 149 West 45th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $61.25 to $86.25, with $20 student and teacher tickets at the box office the day of show. BRUCE WEBER

* 'RECKLESS' The most dangerous smile on Broadway fills the opening moments of this animated revival of Craig Lucas's comedy from 1988, directed by Mark Brokaw. The smile belongs to Mary-Louise Parker, playing an improbably ecstatic houswife on Christmas Eve, and it's enough to make anyone grin back at her. In the course of the show, however, Ms. Parker's smile wavers, tightens and shrinks in ways that seem to age her at least a decade, so that by the end, you may feel like you've undergone high-speed Prozac withdrawal. ''Reckless'' milks the tension between a goofy surface intoxication and a core of cold sobriety. The story of a runaway waif-woman in a violent world, ''Reckless'' remains a beguiling sneaky crash course in the loss of innocence. Granted, it's as thick with whimsy as Pee-wee Herman's playhouse, and its ideal environment is not a big Broadway theater. But Ms. Parker's high incandescence and emotional fluidity go some distance in justifying this scaled-up production (1:45). Biltmore Theater, 261 West 47th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets: $51-$79; $26 student rush tickets available the day of the show. BRANTLEY

*+ 'WONDERFUL TOWN' (Tony winner for choreography). Standing on high heels that transform her into the tallest, most self-conscious figure on stage and mugging with the rubbery animation of Desilu-vintage Lucille Ball, Brooke Shields is game, gawky, a little unsteady and supremely likable as Ruth Sherwood, the man-scaring writer from Ohio who arrives in Manhattan in 1935 as green as a spring tomato. In this delicious revival of the 1953 musical, Ms. Shields is an unexpected and unpretentious delight, adding a goofy sweetness to a production whose charms have only mellowed since it opened last fall. No, she doesn't rival the impeccable polish of her predecessor, Donna Murphy. But Ms. Shields appealingly emphasizes the inner na?of a character whose worldly sophistication keeps slipping off like an ill-fitting cocktail hat. Leonard Bernstein's happiest score is played as ravishingly ever by the onstage orchestra. And the crackerjack supporting cast includes the appealingly relaxed Gregg Edelman and the honey-voiced Jennifer Hope Wills, as Ruth's luscious sister, Eileen (2:30). Hirschfeld, 302 West 45th Street, Clinton, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $51 and $101. BRANTLEY

Off Broadway

+ 'DIRTY TRICKS' Distinguishing between blazing energy and plain old desperation isn't always easy. Look at Martha Mitchell, who as the wife of United States Attorney General John Mitchell teetered so spectacularly between high spirits and dementia during the Watergate era. Now in John Jeter's ''Dirty Tricks,'' the redoubtable Judith Ivey has taken on the woman whose eagerness to share secrets and fears with the American people helped bring down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Ms. Ivey, as always, has vitality and skill to spare. But these assets are deployed in a vain attempt to paper over the seams in a conspicuously piecemeal play. Like its compulsively chatty heroine, ''Dirty Tricks,'' directed by Margaret Whitton, is scattershot, hazy and, yes, desperate. Even with Ms. Ivey pouring on the cotillion-belle flirtiness and Southern discomfort, ''Dirty Tricks'' is nowhere near as entertaining or alarming as Mrs. Mitchell was at the height of her notoriety (1:30). Public Theater, 525 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets: $50. BRANTLEY

* 'MRS. FARNSWORTH' Political candidates poised to sling mud might take a pointer from A. R. Gurney: good manners can be lethal weapons. Though it deals with revelations that are the stuff of smear campaigns, ''Mrs. Farnsworth'' is as polite and sweetly subversive a political attack as you're likely to come across. Set in a creative-writing classroom (with the excellent Danny Burstein as the teacher), the play unfolds around its title character's desire to write a novel about her youthful involvement with a man who sounds awfully like George W. Bush. Sigourney Weaver, returning to the role she created last spring, deploys annihilating charm as a wealthy high-WASP wife; Gerry Bamman, as her husband, completes the cast. ''Mrs. Farnsworth,'' directed by Jim Simpson, is a polemical exercise that never screams at you. Instead, it feels as if it is spoken out of the side of the mouth -- sotto voce and through a locked jaw. As delivered by Ms. Weaver, this turns out be a thoroughly disarming technique (1:30). Flea Theater, 41 White Street, TriBeCa, (212) 352-3101. Wednesdays through Saturdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays and Saturdays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $50 to $60. BRANTLEY

+ 'SLAVA'S SNOWSHOW' A giggle of clowns led by the Russian master Slava Polunin is stirring up laughter and enjoyment at the Union Square Theater. As audiences shuffle in through the snowlike rectangles of white paper that blanket the floor and seats, prompting immediate attempts at artificial snowball throwing, this show announces itself as something unusual. And so it is, as Mr. Polunin, with his baggy yellow romperlike costume, his red ball of a nose, his tufts of white hair and his shaggy red bulbous shoes, teams with his cutup colleagues. Before the night is over, in a show that touches the heart as well as tickles the funnybone, members of the audience are likely to find themselves covered by a giant cobweb, spritzed with water, providing a lap for a wandering clown and stung by the snow of the title, propelled with blizzard force in a dramatic finale (1:30). Union Square Theater, 100 East 17th Street, (212) 307-4100. Tuesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 4 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 5:30 p.m. Tickets $59.90 to $64.90. LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

'SPATTER PATTERN (OR HOW I GOT THAT STORY)' Neal Bell's moody new play is a cautionary tale that proves the wisdom of avoiding one's neighbors. Edward Dunn (Peter Frechette), one of the dual protagonists, is a screenwriter still in shellshock over the death of his companion of more than two decades. Trying to jumpstart his stalled career, he moves into a pokey new studio apartment. His neighbor who turns out to be -- egad! -- a tabloid star, the Prof Who Offed the Co-ed, although the guilt of Marcus Tate (Darren Pettie) has yet to be proved. (He hasn't even been charged.) Edward, at emotional loose ends, strikes up a casual friendship with the celebrity next door. They are soon embroiled in a knotty psychological intimacy. Elements of Mr. Bell's murder-mystery plot suggest the playwright has logged more than a few ''Law & Order'' marathons in his television-watching diary. But the writing has a literate, high-toned shimmer that would probably bring out the red pencils from Dick Wolf's producers. Unfortunately the playwright is unable to meld these elements into a satisfying whole. The play rings hollow as an inquiry into gray areas of moral responsibility. And ''Spatter Pattern'' fizzles out more thoroughly as a thriller with an unexciting conclusion. But the director Michael Greif's stylish production drenches the writing in so much noir-ish atmosphere it takes a while to notice. Mr. Frechette's familiar, woozy-wistful stage persona is a good match for the emotionally dislocated Edward, and the opaque surfaces of Mr. Pettie's Marcus Tate keep us guessing (2:00). Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton, (212) 279-4200. Tuesdays through Fridays at 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Sundays at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets: $38 to $45. CHARLES ISHERWOOD

+ 'STRING OF PEARLS' It's that old one-object-through-the-years gimmick, but Michele Lowe's one-act drama makes it fresh, funny and poignant. The stellar four-woman cast includes Ellen McLaughlin, the Tony Award-winning angel from ''Angels in America,'' and Mary Testa, the Tony-nominated alcoholic voice teacher from ''On the Town.'' Along with Antoinette LaVecchia and Sharon Washington, they create more than two dozen characters in a highly satisfying, often hilarious blend of sex, satire and absurdism, with an emphasis on women's relationships and the inevitability of both loss and happiness. The play, directed with knowing sparkle by Eric Simonson, is the tale of a necklace bought by a New York man for his wife just before he dies, its loss and its travels over the next three decades. That involves a lot of women, including a divorced landlady who is kind to a woman with cancer, a Tunisian hotel housekeeper with a greedy husband, a Riverside Drive swimmer who pretends not to be rich and a 300-pound lesbian gravedigger. Even the minor characters are memorable (1:30). Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters, 59 East 59th Street, (212) 279-4200. Tuesdays at 7 p.m.; Wednesdays through Fridays at 8 p.m.; Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $55. ANITA GATES

++ 'WHITE CHOCOLATE' Think of it as ''Black Like Moi.'' William Hamilton's play about a rich white couple who wake up to discover they've turned black is a shrill, sporadically funny situation comedy that is at heart nothing more than its central situation. Mr. Hamilton is famous for his cartoons in The New Yorker, which portray willowy, patrician figures poised over cocktails and crudit? Throughout ''White Chocolate,'' which is directed as if it were a traffic jam by David Schweizer, there are sharp, shiny lines that might work as captions for Hamilton cartoons. (''She may not want a Scotch, Brandon. It's not dark yet, and she's only half-WASP.'') But they are lines that tell you less about character than class. And as a comedy of social identity, ''White Chocolate'' never looks far beneath the veneers it pretends to be peeling away. With Lynn Whitfield and Reg E. Cathey as the transformed spouses and the inimitable Julie Halston, who finds the wildly surreal in the conventional role of a blue-blooded snob (2:15). Century Center for the Performing Arts, 111 East 15th Street, (212) 239-6200. Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m. Tickets: $55 to $60. BRANTLEY

Last Chance

* 'HEDDA GABLER' Ivo van Hove's strange, and strangely enthralling, new production of Ibsen's much-mounted drama about a dangerously frustrated housewife may not necessarily illuminate the play as a dramatic text. His sights are set considerably higher: he is an artist seeking, as Ibsen once did, to illuminate the world around him. The set, designed by his longtime collaborator Jan Versweyveld, is not a reasonable representation of the handsome, expensively appointed home spoken of more than once in the course of the play; the empty, echoing space represents an interior landscape, the cold, underpopulated expanses of Hedda's mind. In a performance that is a major achievement for this adventurous actress, Elizabeth Marvel evokes this process with captivating clarity, tracing the disjointed trajectory of an intellect devouring itself. The rest of the cast is also superb (2:30). New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets: $65. ISHERWOOD

'LAST EASTER' The unofficial anthem of Bryony Lavery's abrasively sentimental comedy is Irving Berlin's ''Easter Parade.'' But as you watch this tale of a terminally ill lighting designer and her terminally madcap friends, you may think of another Berlin standard, the one in which theater folk are hymned for being able ''to smile when they are low.'' The author, who made a smashing New York debut this year with ''Frozen,'' chronicles an antic trip to Lourdes undertaken by June (Veanne Cox), a lighting designer with second-stage cancer, and her three best friends. They all face down doom with the typically British stiff upper lip, though here it acquires a curl of flashy bravado. The attitude is adorned with bright, shrink-wrapped eccentricities and desperate jokes. Directed by Doug Hughes, the cast members are as winsomely brittle as the script demands that they be. But the pained, reflective lyricism at the play's center is overwhelmed by its brave, quippy flippancy (2:00). Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 279-4200. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 2:30 and 8 p.m.. Tickets: $60; $15 student rush tickets available 30 minutes before performances. BRANTLEY

'RICHARD III' Ascending the throne has never been more of a struggle for Shakespeare's most Machiavellian monarch than it is in this production. Peter Dinklage (of the film ''The Station Agent''), who portrays the title character, is 4 foot 5 inches, and the throne of England was obviously designed with a taller man in mind. That means that for this Richard, physically placing himself in the seat of power requires strenuous and gymnastic exertions, an image that would be comic except for the determination and harsh sense of absurdity with which he invests it. And once this Richard is seated, he owns that throne. The hard blue ice of his eyes is enough to deflect any challenge. It is even almost enough to make you forget the overheated amateurishness of the show. Peter DuBois's production doesn't drag, but its high spirits are those of an overcaffeinated adolescent. See it, though, for Mr. Dinklage's refreshingly direct and purposeful Richard, whose fierce, effortful will power translates into extraordinary charisma (2:45). Public Theater, 525 Lafayette Street, East Village, (212) 239-6200. Tonight at 8; tomorrow at 2 and 8 p.m.;Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets: $50. BRANTLEY

Art

A selective listing by critics of The Times: New or noteworthy art, design and photography exhibitions at New York museums and art galleries this weekend. At many museums, children under 12 and members are admitted free. Addresses, unless otherwise noted, are in Manhattan. Most galleries are closed on Sundays and Mondays, but hours vary and should be checked by telephone. Gallery admission is free unless noted. * denotes a highly recommended show. Full reviews of recent museum and gallery shows: nytimes.com/art.

Museums

* 'THE ART OF ROMARE BEARDEN,' Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Ave., at 75th Street, (212) 570-3600, through Jan. 9. It's a pity only that this retrospective is so big. Art like Bearden's -- mostly small, intense and intricate -- deserves close scrutiny. His genius, aside from his poetic knack for piecing scraps of photographs and other tiny tidbits together, was to see collage as an inherent social metaphor: that its essence was to turn nothings into something, making disparate elements cohere, a positivist enterprise. His collages celebrated black culture and personal history, combined elements of East and West, high and low, old and new: African masks with ancient Greek art, Matisse with patchwork quilts. Literature and music shaped the work no less than Picasso, George Grosz and Vermeer did. ''There are roads out of secret places within us along which we all must move as we go to touch others,'' Bearden said. And that's exactly where he takes us. Hours: Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Fridays, 1 to 9 p.m. Admission: $12; $9.50, students and 62+. MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

'ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR,' New Museum of Contemporary Art/Chelsea, 556 West 22nd Street, (212) 219-1222, through Nov. 13. Occupying new temporary quarters on the Chelsea Art Museum's ground floor, the New Museum presents a mostly video group show that reflects the problems of adapting to the constant changes of modern experience. Robert Melee's home-entertainment center documents his adaptation to his eccentric mother; a video by Bojan Sarcevic shows a Turkish Gypsy band learning to play Western pop songs; and, best of all, a video by Kerry Tribe shows a wonderfully charismatic 10-year-old girl thoughtfully responding to philosophical questions posed by a man off-camera. Hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 6 p.m.; Thursdays, to 8 p.m. Admission: $6; students and 65+, $3. KEN JOHNSON

* 'JOSEF AND ANNI ALBERS: DESIGNS FOR LIVING,' Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street, (212) 849-8400, through Feb. 27. This enlightening, quietly excellent show is the first to juxtapose the design efforts -- his furniture, her textiles -- of two remarkable artists who happened to be married to each other. Instead of Josef's paintings of glowing nesting squares, which presage Minimalism, we get his 1927 nesting tables with the same meticulous sense of color, proportion and geometry that he would later apply to canvas. Anni brought a similarly intelligent structure to fabrics and tapestries that make every thread, texture and color count, at once exposing and exalting her medium's basic grid. She was the Sol LeWitt of weaving. Reflecting design moving toward art by dint of formidable concentration on its own purposes and potentials, this show may rearrange some ideas about early modernist design as well as Minimalist art and furniture. Hours: Tuesdays to Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 6 p.m. Admission: $10; students and 62+, $7. ROBERTA SMITH

* 'AUSTRIA WEST: NEW ALPINE ARCHITECTURE' AND 'NEW ALPINE RESIDENCES,' Austrian Cultural Forum, 11 East 52nd Street, (212) 319-5300, through Oct. 30. An exciting survey of more than 70 structures -- from hotels to factories -- produced by what amounts to a thriving school of young architects working in the Austrian provinces of Tyrol and Vorarlberg. Their historical pedigree reaches back to the International Style and the Bauhaus, but has been relaxed by postmodernism and inspired by recent advances in building materials, techniques and systems. Nothing helps the new Alpine architecture like the grandeur of the old Alpine landscape, but this show confirms the point so often lost on American builders: that elegance, sustainability, innovation and respect for the environment are not antithetical. A show within a show of 40 houses by the same architects reflects more intimate applications of their ideas. One can come away with the inspiring realization that old history can be taught new tricks, and that even in these global, postmodern, pluralistic times, there can still be such a thing as a coherent style that accommodates individual sensibilities. Hours: Mondays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free. SMITH

* 'THE AZTEC EMPIRE,' Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500, through Feb. 13. When a big survey of Aztec art opened in London in 2002, everybody flipped out. It was one of the hottest ancient-art events since Tutankhamen. Now an expanded version of the London show is at the Guggenheim, and it's a stunner. Objects from pre-Aztec Mexico set the stage, but it is material from the bloody-minded, deity-besotted Aztec culture that fills the museum's darkened ramps. Set on jutting platforms and dark recesses are a skull-headed earth goddess in a skirt of writhing snakes, a warrior metamorphizing into a bird and a god of spring and fertility shedding his skin. Funky clay images of domestic life alternate with ultrasophisticated gold jewelry, and in one astonishing small sculpture, a human face splits apart to reveal the ages of man. The show may be a little too heavy on theater and too light on information, but it's totally mesmerizing. HOLLAND COTTER

* 'CHINA: DAWN OF A GOLDEN AGE, 200-750 A.D,' the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710, through Jan. 23. Almost all of the 350 objects in this splendid and rigorous exhibition are straight from China; a few were unearthed as recently as last year. But the show is far less about trophy archaeology than about history or about how archaeology is shaped into history. There are a few monumental sculptures; most of the objects, of gold, silver, bronze, lacquer and ceramic, are small, but absolutely riveting. And the guiding theme -- that China, far from being a pure, monolithic source from which peripheral cultures drew, took from the larger world at least as much as it gave -- has everything to say to our own multicultural time. It's a show that asks you to do some work, but there is so much of interest to look at that no one, even the casual drive-by viewer, will feel shortchanged. Hours: Sundays, Tuesdays through Thursdays, 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays until 9 p.m. Admission: $12; students and 65+, $7. COTTER

* 'COLONIAL ANDES: TAPESTRIES AND SILVERWORK, 1530-1830,' Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, (212) 535-7710, through Dec. 12. This sumptuous, groundbreaking show examines the fruitful cultural collision triggered by the Spanish conquest of the highly developed Incan empire in 1532. Their forced mixing resulted in a third hybrid culture that reached its zenith in two indigenous crafts: metalwork and, especially, tapestry weaving, which the Andean people perfected over 100 years. Beginning with the gorgeously geometric pre-Colonial tunics and mantles worn by the Inca elite, this exhibition traces the progressive absorption and adjustment of Renaissance and Baroque styles from Europe. The silverwork has an astounding roiling energy that seems to reflect the metal's abundance. Hours and admission: see above. SMITH

* 'DESIGN IS NOT ART: FUNCTIONAL OBJECTS FROM DONALD JUDD TO RACHEL WHITEREAD,' Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, 2 East 91st Street, (212) 849-8400, through Feb. 27. This bracingly contentious but spatially challenged and cursory show is worth seeing, if only because it is the first in an American museum to survey the functional and semifunctional objects designed during the last three decades by artists, in this case 18 well-known Minimalists, post-Minimalists and post-post-Minimalists. The show is overdue, which also makes it seem late, as it ignores many younger artists. It also resembles a high-end home furnishings store. Points of interest are few: Richard Tuttle's lamps, John Chamberlain's carved foam couch, Joel Shapiro's side tables, crystal tumblers by Sol LeWitt and, above all, Franz West's decorate-it-yourself table and chairs. The only designs that seem likely to last are those of Donald Judd, who presides over the exhibition as Picasso would over a survey of Cubism. Hours and admission: see above. SMITH

'DON'T CALL IT PERFORMANCE,' Museo del Barrio, 1230 Fifth Avenue, at 104th Street, East Harlem, (212) 831-7272, through Nov. 7. Performative seems to be the preferred term now for performance art, to distinguish it from theater. Whatever, it's alive and kicking here where short videos by 30 artists, mostly Latino or Latin American but including some North American and European colleagues, are on view. They are grouped in five categories, dealing with behavior; meditative and spiritual explorations; pop culture; social and political views; and sound, including language and music. The work is uneven, but you do get a sense that a younger generation is keeping performative work a vital presence in the art world. Hours: Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission: $6; $4 for students and 65+. GRACE GLUECK

'EUROPEAN BRONZES FROM THE QUENTIN COLLECTION,' the Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, (212) 288-0700, through Jan. 2. During the last few decades there has been a revival of interest in the collection and technical exploration of small-scale bronzes from the Renaissance, depicting gods, goddesses, religious figures, nymphs, fauns, satyrs, animals and simple folk. About 35 of these statuettes, from the 15th to the mid-18th centuries and assembled by an Argentine collector, star in this lively show. Originally inspired by mythological themes or classical marble statuary, and often reconstructed in innovative ways by well-known artists, the statuettes were eagerly sought by European connoisseurs, who admired their masterly modeling, subtle surfacing and elegant finishes. Happily, these bronzes are displayed without vitrines, so they can be examined closely from every angle. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 6 p.m. Admission: $12; $8 for 62+; $5 for students. GLUECK

'GREAT EXPECTATIONS: JOHN SINGER SARGENT PAINTING CHILDREN,' Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, (718) 638-5000, through Jan. 16. Primarily known for his dashing portraits of high-born ladies sumptuously decked out, Sargent painted other subjects, too, not least among them children. And in these portraits, mostly of upper-class offspring, to be sure, he tended to get more real. This show, presenting about 40 works on the subject, has large ambitions. A major one is exploring how his likenesses tied in with the changing notions of childhood that came into play at the end of the 19th century, when children began to be regarded as distinctive personalities in their own right. For the most part here, he seems to see his young subjects that way, rather than as the syrupy stereotypes portrayed by his Victorian and 18th-century predecessors. Said to be the first to bring together Sargent's influential portraits of children, the show with its catalog is a refreshing new take on this bravura brushmeister. Hours: Wednesdays to Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (to 11 p.m. on the first Saturday of every month). Admission: $6; students and 62+, $3. GLUECK

* 'LOOKING AT LIFE,' International Center of Photography, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at 43rd Street, (212) 857-0000, through Nov. 28. From its start in 1936 until its demise as a weekly magazine in 1972, Life was this country's archive of public memory, supplying millions of Americans, most of them educated, white and middle class, with a collective visual inventory of the world as imagined for Main Street, U.S.A. This entertaining show is a reminder of many memorable photographs the magazine published, from Robert Capa's pictures of the landing at Normandy Beach and Larry Burrows's bloodied G.I.'s in Vietnam to W. Eugene Smith's Spanish village and Carlo Bavagnoli's shot of Jane Fonda as Barbarella. The big idea is how Life and, by implication, all forms of popular journalism, package news, but in the end the photographs, looked at one by one, speak for themselves. Hours: Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Admission: $10; $7, students and 62+.
KIMMELMAN

* 'MEMORIALS OF WAR,' Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Avenue, at 75th Street, (212) 570-3600, through Nov. 28. The Whitney reveals a little-seen aspect of its collection and some interesting new acquisitions in this small but powerful show of works inspired by the Vietnam War. Vic Muniz's recent photographs are ghostly recreations of three of that era's most indelible news photographs. Edward Kienholz and Robert Morris are represented by proposals from around 1970 for unexecuted memorials that emphasize the hard truths of armed combat. Chris Burden restages five of America's ''Darker Moments,'' in tableaus whose toy-soldier scale in no way diminishes shocks and aftershocks of these events. Hours and admission: see above. SMITH

Galleries: Uptown

NICOLA HICKS, Flowers, 1000 Madison Avenue, (212) 439-1700, through Oct. 30. This accomplished British sculptor combines neo-Classical traditionalism, surrealistic mythology and Modernist raw materialism in bronze and painted plaster representations of humans and animals. The life-size reclining nude attended by winged putti veers toward old school academicism, but the portraits of dogs and the muscular head of a Minotaur have much vitality. JOHNSON

STONE ROBERTS, Salander-O'Reilly, 20 East 79th Street, (212) 879-6606, through Oct. 30. Mr. Roberts aims for a kind of Victorian revivalism in his big paintings of well-to-do New Yorkers inside and outside their well-appointed homes. Apparently copied from photographs, they are made with assiduous attention to detail, and from a distance the realist illusionism is impressive if not colorful. The narrative psychology is vapid, however, and under close-up inspection, the paint is lifeless. JOHNSON

FRITZ BULTMAN, ''Irascible II: Abstract Expressionist Paintings, Circa 1960,'' Schlesinger, 24 East 73rd Street, (212) 734-3600, through Oct. 30. In the late 1950's and early 60's, this Abstract Expressionist was in top form, judging by the eight small- to medium-size canvases in this show. He wasn't doing anything that Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline didn't do, but his impetuous, sensuously crusty paintings have an urgency of their own that still feels fresh. JOHNSON

Galleries: 57th Street

KATHERINE BOWLING, ''Divide,'' Greenberg Van Doren, 730 Fifth Avenue, at 57th Street, (212) 445-0444, through Oct. 30. To plain vanilla countryside, Ms. Bowling's softly brushed works bring a touch of soul. Concentrating on the landscapes surrounding her home in upstate New York, she responds to the roads, trees and fields that she experiences daily and the light that falls on them at various times of day and night. Her spirit is derived from the great landscapists of the past, but she uses thoroughly modern compositional and painting devices. GLUECK

Galleries: SoHo

'THE ART OF READING,' Poets House, 72 Spring Street, (212) 431-7920, through Nov. 22. This appropriately quiet presentation of 38 small paintings, drawings, prints and photographs of people reading includes Paul Cadmus's portrait of Glenway Wescott; David Hockney's sweet colored pencil drawing of a young man reclining on a sofa; photographs of William Burroughs by Allen Ginsberg; and King Babar (the elephant) reading his newspaper at the beach in a watercolor by Laurent DeBrunhoff. JOHNSON

WILLIAM HUDDERS, Tatistcheff, 529 West 20th Street, (212) 627-4547, through Oct. 30. If you gave this exhibition of neatly painted views of Long Island City-scapes and still-life pictures of shoes, apples and glassware just a quick glance you might peg it as the work of an earnestly conservative recent art school graduate. The more you look, however, the more inexplicably odd, sweet and subtly humorous these cannily simplified pictures seem. Influences of De Chirico and Hopper are evident, but Mr. Hudders has his own engaging way with the poetry of ordinary things. JOHNSON

JEFF LADOUCEUR, ''Schmo,'' ZieherSmith, 531 West 25th Street, (212) 229-1088, through Nov. 13. With a finely pointed pen in black ink and a meticulous touch, this Vancouver-based artist draws cartoons about a bald, long-nosed, sad-sack of a character called ''Schmo.'' Our hero's struggles with ordinary existence and surrealistic encounters with cloud-creatures, tiny elephants, octopi and an abominable snowman are funny, weird and touching. JOHNSON

Galleries: Chelsea

TONY DE LOS REYES, ''The Strange Tale of Near and Far,'' DCKT Contemporary, 537 West 24th Street, (212) 741-9955, through Oct. 30. From a distance it looks as if Mr. de los Reyes is in engaged in an eccentric revival of some antique tradition. He paints images of 17th-century ships at sea and detailed images of wild plants and flowers in shades of blue and white like Delftware. Up close you discover that these glossy pictures are made by distinctively modern methods of pouring, pooling and manipulating liquid paint. JOHNSON

* NALINI MALANI, Bose Pacia, 508 West 26th Street, (212) 989-7074, through Oct. 30. Ms. Malani, based in Mumbai, has been seen here only sporadically, with paintings in museum group shows and an intensely theatrical video installation at the New Museum two years ago. Both media play a role in this strong gallery solo show, her first in Manhattan, that draws on mythology, religion and history, both Western and Indian. In paintings, she dovetails the figures of Sita from the ''Ramayana'' and Medea -- the one an ideal of submissive self-sacrifice, the other an emblem of destructive fury -- to propose a complex female persona beyond controlling stereotypes. A video installation addressing sectarian violence and a magic lantern-style shadow play complete the exhibition, which finds a political artist of impressive visual range at the height of her power. COTTER

Other Galleries

'ELECTRIFYING ART: ATSUKO TANAKA, 1954-1968,' Grey Art Gallery, New York University, 100 Washington Square East, Greenwich Village, (212) 998-6780, through Dec. 11. In the late 1950's and early 1960's, Ms. Tanaka was a member of the avant-garde Japanese art group called Gutai, and the Grey Gallery survey covers the years of that association. It's a visually low-key show, but one with lots of ideas from an artist who was doing proto-Conceptualist and proto-Minimalist work and very early versions of sound and performance art. Spend time with the short films in the galleries; they bring everything else to life. COTTER

* FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION NATIONAL MONUMENT, Foley Square, Lower Manhattan, (212) 206-6674, through Nov. 13. On a return engagement sponsored by Creative Time and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, this interactive outdoor sculpture, made in the symbolic year 1984, consists of a big, bright red Constructivist-style megaphone, through which members of the public can exercise their right to free speech. The work is a collaboration among the architect Laurie Hawkinson, the artist Erika Rothenberg and the performer John Malpede. It points, perhaps appropriately, toward the state and federal courthouses. SMITH

Last Chance

HERNAN BAS, ''Sometimes With One I Love,'' Daniel Reich, 537 A West 23rd Street, Chelsea, (212) 924-4949, through tomorrow. Mr. Bas, who lives in Miami and was in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, paints formally modest but unabashedly sentimental narratives of adventure, sexual intrigue and mystical experience starring slender, fine-featured adolescent boys. Made in an expressionistic style that calls to mind paperback book covers of the 1940's, his easel-size paintings are exciting mainly for the possibly more ambitious future of painterly story-telling they promise. JOHNSON

'COVER GIRL: THE FEMALE BODY AND ISLAM IN CONTEMPORARY ART,' Ise Cultural Foundation, 555 Broadway, near Prince Street, SoHo, (212) 925-1649, through tomorrow. Islam is a monolithic word in the West, though there is every reason to know it shouldn't be. The five women in this show were born in Islamic countries or raised in Islamic households. Yet no two of them take the same approach to the theme -- at once a stereotype and a reality -- of the veiled female body in Islamic culture. A wall text by the Indian artist Rummana Hussain, who died in 1999, captures the prevailing refusal to deal in easy answers: ''Have you defined her? Does she have any options? Are her beliefs an escape? Or a security? Or a habit? Or a choice?'' The complete text is quite long, and it is composed entirely of questions. HOLLAND COTTER

* DONALD JUDD, Peter Freeman, 560 Broadway at Prince Street, Soho, (212) 966-5154, through tomorrow. This show features an unknown work:the only triangular piece in captivity by the generally four-square Minimalist sculptor Donald Judd. It is large, equilateral, made of raw plywood mad open at the top, with its interior and exterior unexpectedly opposed. The only other triangular Judd is an outdoor work in concrete in Australia. SMITH

* 'LEON FERRARI: POLITISCRIPTS,' The Drawing Room, 40 Wooster St., (212) 219-2166, through tomorrow. Born in Argentina in 1920, Leon Ferrari is one of a group of Latin American modernists who, in the 1960's, created an intensely politicized art that ran in parallel to, and sometimes anticipated, trends in Europe and North America. The ink-on-paper pieces in this small show may best be understood as a response to the repressive political of environment of Argentina in 1960's, when censorship was common. A few are inflammatory statements by the artist written in a twisting script at once amusingly ornate and next to impossible to read. And even those that look entirely abstract are executed with care, so that they all convey the impression of carrying coded and encrypted information known only to the artist. In short, they are like taunting gestures of counter-censorship. Through its very opaqueness abstraction becomes a political tool. COTTER

PETER GREAVES, ''Reverie,'' Forum, 745 Fifth Avenue, (212) 355-4545, through tomorrow. Mr. Greaves's miniature portraits of attractive young women, each a bit larger than a postage stamp, are marvels of fastidious technique. With a slightly hazy focus and not a single visible stroke of pencil or brush, his tiny, pensive heads seem to emerge as if conjured by sorcery from the dark backgrounds. JOHNSON

ROBIN HILL, Lennon Weinberg, 560 Broadway at Prince Street, SoHo, (212) 941-0012, through tomorrow. Second-generation Process artists don't fade away, they just keep marshalling orderly accumulations of this or that material as if Eva Hesse never existed. The works here employ cotton batting, wax, plaster and string, as well as hundreds of tiny circles of mica that are pinned to the wall in buoyant circling lines. Beautiful, but also familiar. SMITH

TERESA HUBBARD AND ALEXANDER BIRCHLER, ''Single Wide,'' Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, 120 Park Avenue at 42nd Street, (917) 663-2453, through today. ''Single Wide'' is a technically sophisticated, six-minute video loop that revolves around the nighttime event of a distraught woman crashing her pickup truck into her rural ''single wide''-size trailer home. Shot in one long circulating pan, it is like a film version of a Gregory Crewdson photograph with the vividly amplified sound effects of a Janet Cardiff production. JOHNSON

AN-MY LE, Murray Guy, 453 West 17th Street, (212) 463-7372, through tomorrow. ''Theater of war'' refers to the geopolitical area that any war actively encompasses. But battles are staged and choreographed, troops deployed in units, like corps de ballet. All of this requires rehearsal, and rehearsal for war is the subject of these photographs, shot at the Marine Corps Air Ground Control Center in California, a desert outpost where marines train for future combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. The terrain has a John Ford-ish grandeur. The marines act out cowboy-and-Indian roles: some play Americans; others play Iraqis. The pictures are dramatic and gorgeous, as combat photography often is. They are also apt documents of a war which, some people argue, is based on a fiction and, at least as originally scripted, staged for the media. COTTER

* BEN NICHOLSON, Jacobson Howard, 19 East 76th Street, (212) 570-2362, through tomorrow. The best pieces in this show of paintings and drawings by one of the best painters to emerge in England between the world wars are a half-dozen Cubist-style pictures from the 1940's and 50's. They are notable for their exquisite draftsmanship, suave colors, delicately tactile surfaces and lively, syncopated play with flat shapes and planar layering. JOHNSON

PAUL HENRY RAMIREZ, ''In Fluent Form,'' Mary Boone, 745 Fifth Avenue, (212) 752-2929, through tomorrow. The stylized parsings of the body in these impeccably mannered canvases are accomplished by dividing flat, pristine white grounds with arrangements of thin vertical and horizontal lines, often rooted in rounded blocks of brilliant color. The lines support bright, fleshy blobs in candy hues and occasionally end in hearts that flower into symmetrical bursts of wiry, wiglike curls. Elegant splatters of drops in the shape of eyeballs dance cheerily around these conceits. The high-finish paint surface is nothing short of perfection. The body as an 18th-century drawing room or a Vivaldi composition might work as a description of these pretty but sterile paintings. GLUECK

* PIPILOTTI RIST, Luhring Augustine, 531 West 24th Street, (212) 206-9100, through tomorrow. This relatively uncluttered video installation offers full-blown Rist World along with further proof that the artist's dizzying, slipping, sliding conflation of sound, color, scale and spatial illusion has few equals in video. The subversive (feminist) tensions of Ms. Rist's best works are absent here, but the work makes the brain so fuzzily relaxed you may not notice. SMITH

'TALESPINNING: SELECTIONS FALL 2004,' Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, Soho, (212) 219-2166, through tomorrow. The work of 14 artists whose imagery flirts with narrative in one way or another fills this wide-ranging show, which exposes some intriguing talents. Some manipulate texts and even whole books; others play with fairy tales and folklore; still others base figments on literary characters and a few address social, political and other worldly topics. It all adds up to an uneven show, but one in the center's tradition of invigorating experiment. GLUECK

Photos: MOVIES, DANCE AND ART -- A puppet of Michael Moore, top left, in Trey Parker and Matt Stone's film satire ''Team America.'' An assessment, this page. Above left, Paloma Herrera and José Manuel Carreño in ''Petite Mort,'' which will be performed by American Ballet Theater. Page 28. A silver eucharistic casket from the show ''Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-1830,'' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Page 29. (Photos by Melinda Sue Gordon/Paramount Pictures [''Team America'']; Marty Sohl [''Petite Mort'']; Metropolitan Museum of Art)